New Path Youth and Family Services Annual Report 2011-12
Glen Newby, CEO Sandy Roberts, Co-Chair Lisa Clark, Co-Chair
Once again, New path Youth and Family Services has experienced a very active year. The most significant item was the implementation of enhanced children’s mental health services across the province. As a result, New Path was able to increase its work force significantly to help reduce the wait list for services and to increase the capacity of our Community Partners with Schools (COMPASS) programs and services across Simcoe County. With the funding announcement in October, there was significant re-allocation of staff and functions across New Path, and we must congratulate management staff for implementing within three months. This clearly reflects our flexibility when implementing change.
In Program Activities, New Path is pursuing a service design that ensures effectiveness through evidenced based programs, all framed within our values and principles developed in the previous year. We are very grateful to New Path Foundation for their support in providing funds to enhance our capacity building and training in evidenced informed services. New Path is enjoying the results of last year’s work on developing core competencies for all staff members. The expertise of our Human Resources staff have used these competencies to guide our recruitment process, resulting in an effective, competency-based work force well into the future. We are also very pleased to have settled our new collective agreement in a collaborative and respectful manner, which has resulted in another three years of stability. We thank all those involved for their commitment to ensure children and youth continue to receive critical mental health support.
New Path continues to be well positioned to enhance social enterprise activities and initiate new and innovative approaches, through an Incubator Committee, to ensure future sustainability. Alignment with our strategic priorities is the premise that will provide a more disciplined, business approach to social enterprise work. We are also very pleased with the growth of our Youth Engagement strategies. This past year has involved many of our youth in so many different areas, the most significant being the Children’s Mental Health Week in May, specific training for staff and board on youth engagement, last year’s Annual General Meeting, and of course our current Annual General Meeting, both led and facilitated by our youth engagement committee. We are most appreciative of the Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health, and the New Mentality project of Children’s Mental Health Ontario for their support to our youth engagement initiatives.
New Path serves all of Simcoe County through eight locations including Bradford, Cookstown, Alliston, Orillia, Collingwood, Midland, and two locations in Barrie. Many of our offices are co-located with other child and youth serving organizations, and the Orillia offices have joined the new Orillia Common Roof which opened its doors in the Fall. The Intake department continues to experience again an increasingly high volume of inquiries and referrals. The Intake staff ensure that all clients are offered consultation sessions as required and requested, while waiting for an opening in their identified program.
New Path participates in a number of assessment processes, in addition to goal rating, and client feedback through Quality Assurance. This is to help determine both eligibility for service, as well as to determine functional improvement while participating in service. Once again, our services and programs show significant improvements for clients and their families.
New Path continues to support and participate fully in the Simcoe County Coalition of Children Youth and Family Services. The Coalition is charged with the coordinated planning for child and youth services and currently has a membership of approximately forty agencies. New Path currently has staff representation on many of its committees and task groups. New Path also continues its strong relationship with Children’s Mental Health Ontario and actively participates at the regional level as well as the clinical and accreditation levels. More recently New Path accepted a motion of the Coalition to participate on the LHIN Leadership Council which oversees all health related funding for Simcoe County and Muskoka. This fits with our principles of collaboration and integration to better serve kids and families.
The Board of Directors all live or work here in Simcoe County, serving as volunteers. They are committed to overseeing the governance responsibilities including quality and responsiveness to the communities served by New Path Youth and Family Services. They have committed enormous amounts of time this past year in order to ensure that governance standards remain at the very highest level possible. We are very pleased to have welcomed many new board members this past year thanks to a successful board recruitment strategy. The board has an active Advocacy Committee to better coordinate community awareness of the mental health needs of kids and to encourage community members to “take a stand for children’s mental health” as we did leading up to election time. Board members also sit on the Youth Engagement Committee. We have also just entered a new strategic planning process and will be ready to roll that out during the summer 2012. Our board members are individually, and collectively, committed to ensuring that New Path “walks the talk”, that the agency inspires change in all we do, from helping kids and families experience improved lives, to advocating for those who are not yet receiving the help they need, to facilitating system change to best use very scarce resources. We thank each and every volunteer board member for their time, commitment, and passion.
We would also like to acknowledge all of our funders including the Ministry of Children and Youth Services which includes Youth Justice, and the Ministry of the Attorney General, New Path Foundation, Trillium Foundation, RBC Foundation, and the many individuals and corporations who have donated their time and money.
We would also like to recognize all the staff. They have endured significant demands and have ensured that client needs always come first. Our gratitude is also extended to all management staff who each has contributed enormous amounts of overtime in order to make sure that New Path staff received the support required to continue high quality services.
Finally, and most importantly, we would like to acknowledge and thank the many children and youth, and their families in our Children’s Services, as well as those clients in our Adult Services, for allowing us into their lives during very difficult and stressful times.
New Path Foundation Annual Report 2011-12
Leading and Inspiring Change: Develop and manage philanthropic investment and mobilize community support to meet the mental health needs of children, youth, and families.
Glen Newby, President & CEO
Paul Pratt, Board Chair
We are now in the 6th year of operations at the 25,000 sq. ft. Barrie Common Roof and the tenant/partner mix continues to offer excellent opportunities for informal discussions across service sectors, formal training sessions, shared meeting rooms, reception services and equipment, as well as sustainability well into the future for our Partner organizations. The business plan is solid and highly regarded. Partner groups, committees, and ongoing operations are running well and we must acknowledge the great work of Stacey Young, our full time Receptionist as well as Jon Thompson our part time evening receptionist, in addition to the ongoing support and responsiveness from Roger Fridge our Maintenance Coordinator.
New Path Foundation is also very pleased to have officially opened our 36,000 sq. ft. Orillia Common Roof earlier this fiscal year. Construction was generally completed on time and the normal and predictable challenges of a new building are being sorted out very well, with the support and assistance of all the Partners and tenants. Collaboration and integration does not happen overnight, but rather it is a developmental process, and we are very pleased that our Orillia agencies have chosen this new way of doing business. A shout-out must go to Neville Twine, V.P. Common Roof Development, Laurie Herd, Orillia Common Roof Coordinator, and Shannon Flemming, Receptionist, for their dedication to helping the project come to reality. Together we will improve the access to quality human services in Orillia while providing agency sustainability at the same time.
The model developed by New Path Foundation has attracted the attention of many other communities and we have been honored again this year to share our knowledge in various communities in Ontario, and in the United States. New Path Foundation and The Common Roof, through Glen Newby President and CEO, sit on the NonProfit Centres Network (NCN) Steering Committee, based in San Francisco. Through this affiliation and that of TIDES Canada, Glen is working with various Ontario stakeholders to bring a major conference to the Toronto area the week of October 15, 2012. Then Common Roof will be a success story presented to Canada and to United States members. We are very please to have the Children’s Treatment Network Simcoe-York (a Partner at Barrie Common Roof) join New Path Foundation as one of the many sponsors of this conference along with Infrastructure Ontario, Catholic Charities, United Way, and UrbanSpace.
A major Board of Directors focus this past year has been board recruitment and we are vey pleased to have a number of new board members representing a good cross-section of the business community. Each board member brings a unique perspective on branding, networking, and fund raising, and we are looking forward to bringing all of this expertise together at an upcoming board retreat. The results will set a clear and ambitious agenda for the upcoming year. Paul Pratt, Chair, has rallied our board to focus on two areas, resource development and board recruitment and the fruits of Paul’s leadership are being realized.
New Path Foundation’s annual signature event, “Not Just Jazz”, was very successful again this past year. The evening was a wonderful experience and generated close to $30,000 to help children and youth. The individual and corporate contributors and sponsors, and the Planning Committee chaired by Wendy Fairley, really stepped up to make this event so successful and enjoyable. A substantial grant will be made to New Path Services to help fund staff training and supplies to further clinical transformations towards increased evidenced-informed range of child and youth mental health services.
In addition to various general grants, the Foundation now has four specified funds that support specific activities: the TwineBridge Fund, the Newby Youth Engagement Fund, the Hope Fund and the Coalition Fund that supports the Children Youth and Family Services Coalition of Simcoe County. New Path Foundation believes strongly in integrated planning for children’s services and contributed again this past year by serving as the Trustee for the Simcoe County Coalition’s staffing and financial affairs.
We all get so caught up in the day to day work that it takes a year of reflection to fully appreciate all the accomplishments that the Foundation has been able to make this past year. None of this could have happened without the leadership and guidance of the board of directors, and their generosity of time. None of this could happen without the commitment, expertise and passion of the New Path Foundation staff as well as the ongoing support from Maureen Armstrong, Executive Assistant and Ken Edwards, Vice-President Financial Services. None of this could happen without the skill, expertise and finesse of those leadership staff at New Path Youth and Family Services that volunteer their time. Most importantly, the Foundation’s accomplishments could not have happened without the many stakeholders, individuals and businesses, who have made substantial donations this past year. All of these people understand that the most important investment we can make is in the mental health of our children, youth, and families.
